Weddingbee boards

Here's the story. I have a beautiful cottage-esque building for our wedding. It's in a state park, and picture perfect *if* it doesn't rain for any significant time period. It holds 100 people, but that's family picnic space, not wedding space. With 100 people there is no room for dancing, mingling, or to put card/gift table or dessert table. If the weather is nice, we'll have the dancing and mingling outside after dinner. So the space issue won't be as big of a deal, not to mention we wont be having the cereony in the building as well as pictures.

Other important info - we are providing most of our own food and drinks, including alcohol. We are pulling off this wedding for under $2,000. We don't need rentals for anything as of right now. We are getting hitched in Ithaca, NY. We want to stay within our budget. Our guest list just reached 95. Likely a higher percentage than usual will be present, as a lot of people are using our wedding as the reason to come see everyone again. We are getting married Saturday, May 15, 2010 at 12:30 PM in upstate NY (fingerlakes region).

The problem? What if it rains?!

If it rains, we will be inside this building for the ceremony, family photos, cocktail hour, dinner and dancing. I just don't know how we can fit all those people into this building for the entire wedding. Not to mention we have a lot of grandparents and FI's father just had a hip replacement, so sitting at the benches that go with our gorgeous picnic tables for the entire event is far from ideal.

We thought about renting a party tent and having the ceremony in the building in front of the fire place and then moving to the tent for everything else. But the rental for the tent is a HUGE addition to our budget. (~$1200). And... if it's not raining we won't use it and will have wasted that money. (if we do move to the tent, we can move the tables into it, and still avoid most of the rentals).

We also thought about cutting the guest list back to immediate family members only. The problem is that we've been talking about the wedding with some of FI's aunts and uncles, and they are expecting an invite.

We thought about cutting kids out of the invite list. On principle, and becasue we are having a day time, classy BBQ with only beer served, I want to invite kids as well. I am a family person and I don't want people to feel excluded or be unable to attend because we say no kids. I love kids and am excited to put together kids activity books, etc... for them, but I don't know most of the kids that will be there - they are FI's cousins' kids. 

We thought about cramming it all in the building, and not worrying about it. It'll be cozy, but we'll make do. It probably won't rain anyway.

We've thought about moving to a different location altogether. There is an Inn 1/2 a mile away that would be about $25 dollars a person for a lunch reception, and I am pretty sure they have room for an indoor ceremony. (Or we could still use our original building for the ceremony and go to the inn for the reception).

And I've thought about eloping many, many times.

In short, we want a classy, but inexpensive wedding, which we can easily achieve with our location and current plan, pending good weather. We want our guests to feel comfortable. We want to be outdoors if possible. We want to avoid picking and choosing between family, especially aunts and uncles. Our families are big, so it's either a) all aunts and uncles plus select cousins that we're close wth and including kids still living at home; b) the same, but no younger kids at all (cuts down by 23) or c) only immediate family members (parents, siblings, and g-parents).

What do we do?